Transposition of law

This last year the Member States had to transpose 66 new directives, which represents a large increase in their workload compared with the preparation of Scoreboard 2016 (47 directives). This situation has caused great difficulties, which are reflected in the results for most of the Member States. In general, since the transposition deficit has risen, the average delay has decreased because the significant number of recent directives counted heavily in the calculation of the delay for overdue directives.

Transposition deficit:0.8% (last report: 0.5%) – Slight increase but in a group of 8 Member States that managed to stay under the 1% threshold. The UK has a transposition deficit of only 11% for the directives that had to be transposed in 2016 (until 30 November). However this increased to 44% for the 9 directives with a transposition date within the 3 months before the cut-off date for calculation. This shows that the UK monitors the timely transposition of the directives quite well although with a moderate delay (see average delay below).EU average = 1.5%; Proposed target (in Single Market Act) = 0.5%

Overdue directives:8 (last report: 6), including 3 on social policy (38%). No directive is more than 2 years overdue.

Average delay:5.4 months (last report: 11.3 months) –Sharp decrease. The UK managed to solve its long overdue directive and most of its outstanding directives (7/8) have been due for less than 12 months.EU average = 6.7 months

Compliance deficit:0.9% (last report: 1.0%) – Slight decrease that brings the UK under the 1% threshold (twice the proposed target). The UK is no longer in the group of Member States with the highest deficit.EU average = 0.7%; Proposed target (in Single Market Act) = 0.5%

Infringements

Pending cases:27
(2 new cases and 6 cases closed last report: 31 pending cases >) – Further decrease and now quite close to the EU average number of Single Market-related cases.
(EU average = 24 cases)

Average case duration:44.4 months for the 21 cases not yet sent to the Court (last report: 35.1 months) – Sharp increase in average duration of pending cases: although the UK was able to solve 5 cases, the remaining cases are getting older and weighing more heavily in the calculation of the average duration (in particular 1 environmental case has been ongoing for 9 years and 1 case on services has been ongoing for more than 12 years).
(EU average = 36.9 months)

Compliance with court rulings:18.7 months for the 6 cases at this stage of the procedure (last report: 19.0 months) – Slight decrease. Among the 3 Member States that reduced their time lag in complying with the Court judgments but still just above the 18-month threshold.
(EU average = 22.4 months)

Trade in goods and services

The UK is the Member State with the lowest trade integration in the Single Market for goods and the second lowest trade integration for services. In 2015, trade integration for services increased above EU average, trade integration for goods continued to decrease strongly.

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI)

In 2015, the UK's share of EU FDI inflows showed the highest decrease in the EU whereas the share of outflows experienced the highest increase. The share of EU FDI inward stock showed also the highest decrease in the EU, the share of outward stock decreased also slightly.